But fit and solemn funeral rites were paidto Polydorus. A high mound we rearedof heaped-up earth, and to his honored shadebuilt a perpetual altar, sadly dressedin cypress dark and purple pall of woe.Our Ilian women wailed with loosened hair;new milk was sprinkled from a foaming cup,and from the shallow bowl fresh blood out-pouredupon the sacred ground. So in its tombwe laid his ghost to rest, and loudly sang,with prayer for peace, the long, the last farewell.

Then in th' attendant throng conspicuous,with thousands at his side, the hero movedfrom place of council to his father's tomb.There on the ground he poured libation due,two beakers of good wine, of sweet milk two,two of the victim's blood.

Vergil thus traces back to mythological times the custom of offering liquids to the dead. J.M.C. Toynbee, Death and Burial in the Roman World (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1971), pp. 51-52, gives archaeological evidence of the custom:

Graves, whether for inhumation or cremation, with holes or pipes through which food and drink could be poured down directly on to the burial (profusio), so as to reach the remains, are a not uncommon feature of cemeteries in very diverse areas of the Roman world. For example, in the necropolis excavated under St Peter's in Rome, several instances have come to light. In Tomb F, inset into the border of a mosaic pavement, is a series of small, square marble slabs each pierced with a hole for pouring sustenance down to the dead beneath .... Another child's inhumation burial, this time at Syracuse and with the bones laid directly in the earth under tiles set gable-wise, was connected with the surface by a vertical terracotta pipe, closed at the top by a movable stone stopper.

If you don't placate the dead in this way, they're apt to become restless. George Romero's movie Land of the Dead opens Friday. I hope it's as funny as Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead. The scene with zombies riding the escalator at the mall in Dawn of the Dead is hilarious. I think of it whenever I'm unlucky enough to find myself among the zombie-like shoppers at Minnesota's own Mall of America.